Make your own plum chutney: Simple recipe

We have several old plum trees in our community garden. Almost all the plums ripen at the same time. This means they're only available for a short period throughout the year, but in large quantities. We eat many of them fresh, freeze some, and sometimes bake a cake.
And what about the remaining plums? We'll make chutney with them.

Plum chutney is a wonderful way to use up some of your harvest. You can use it as a flavorful sauce for various dishes, classically with rice and legumes. We even sometimes use chutney like ketchup. The combination of sweet plums, dates, ginger, chili, and spices creates a fruity and spicy chutney that's very easy to make yourself.

Ingredients for the plum chutney

For our plum chutney you will need:

• 500 g prunes
• 6 dried dates
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 TL turmeric
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp grated ginger
• 1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
• 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 4 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 red chili pepper, finely chopped
  

As is often the case with Indian dishes, if you don't have one of these spices, it's not a big deal. Just use what you have and experiment! Depending on the sweetness of the plums and your personal taste, you can also adjust the amount of sugar and chili.

How to make your own plum chutney: step-by-step instructions

1. Prepare plums: 

Wash the plums, remove the stones, and cut the fruit into small pieces. Then finely chop the dried dates and the chili pepper.

2. Mix the ingredients:

Mix the plums and dates with cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, mustard seeds, apple cider vinegar, sugar, salt and chili.
Then let the mixture stand for a few hours. This will allow liquid to be released from the fruit and the different flavors to combine.

3. Cook the chutney

Pour the mixture into a pot and simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally to prevent burning on the bottom of the pot.
The chutney is ready when the plums have softened and a thick, chutney-like consistency has been achieved.

What does plum chutney go well with?

We like to use the chutney as a sauce for rice and legumes. But it also goes well with vegetable dishes, curries, or cheese. And sometimes we actually just use it like ketchup.
You can, of course, experiment with the recipe. A little more chili will make the chutney spicier, while additional dates or a little more sugar will make it sweeter. This way you can adapt the basic recipe to your own taste.

How can plum chutney be stored?

If you don't want to eat the chutney immediately, you can fill it while still hot into very clean, suitable jars, seal them and store them in the refrigerator after it has cooled down.
If you want to preserve your plum chutney for a longer period, you should use a tried and tested canning method. Shelf life depends on factors such as the recipe, acidity, processing, and storage. This way, you can process larger quantities of ripe plums and don't have to use up your entire harvest within just a few days.

What to do with lots of ripe plums?

When a plum tree is heavily laden with fruit, a surprisingly large number of plums can ripen in a short time. Besides chutney, you can of course eat plums fresh, use them in cakes, freeze them, preserve them, or make them into jam and compote. Processing and preserving fruit has a long tradition. After all, fruit trees don't provide their harvest evenly throughout the year, but rather within a relatively short period.
You can find out more in our article. Trees as a source of food. Then and now.

More recipes from the tree

Do you like tree-based recipes? Then try ours too! Vermicelli made from sweet chestnutsours Elderflower syrup or a classic one Graubünden nut cake with walnuts.